The inherent entropy in our lives: to resist or to...

22nd December 2010

I’ve started thinking about it after I read this article and this tweet got me going for a couple of days: “My whole life I’ve been fighting entropy, maybe it’s time I stop fighting” by @stevenbristol . I love stuff like this, makes me ponder on what would be the best way one could choose and what would the solution imply, let’s say, in an empirical way.

“entropy is a measure of the uncertainty associated with a random variable.”

Of course there are more, but I like this one because it works almost flawlessly as a metaphor for life itself: that random variable = life, entropy being the hazard (one should take this with a grain of whatever he/she likes, it’s merely a reductionist definition for the purpose of this article).

So let’s see... at the surface I see two possible solutions: to fight entropy (not necessarily fight it but more in a way of how a sailor doesn’t fight the storm, he embraces the flow of the weaves and the wind so he can make it safely to the other side) or to go with it. I just realized that I’ve been fighting entropy in a bad way, I’m always trying to apply structure to my life and to everything that I do, like work, yet most of the time something like "random(life)" happens and all that abstract structure that exists in my head goes away in a blink of an eye.

There’s nothing wrong with having structures in your life, it’s a good thing, but one (especially me) must realize that it doesn’t always work out and high expectations go hand in hand with high delusions and the latter ones, hurt like hell. Going back to my point: one must embrace the flow of entropy, yet with a small nuance, not in a deterministic way, I mean, not in the way of letting our lives be driven by sheer randomness of events (that’s actually the second solution: to go with it), that’s bad. I find it hard to define it.

Why is it bad to go with entropy, to embrace it and let one life be driven by it ? It’s pretty obvious, I think: we lose all little control we have on our lives. It’s clear we cannot be in full control of external things, yet at least we can be in full control of how we react to entropy (I think that’s the key I needed for the previous paragraph).

The solution: one must learn to be in control of his/hers reactions to entropy. How do we do that ? It varies from person to person, one might code an app for that or someone else (like me) might just realize this and try to apply it from now on.